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Of course the week has been full of rumours of

Ministerial change. One day it was announced that Earl Russell had resigned and would be succeeded by Lord Clarendon, another that Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Milner Gibson, Mr. Cardwell, and Mr. Villiers were about to take their seats below the gangway. All these re- ports are, we believe, either erroneous or premature, and Lord Pal- merston will on Monday, we trust, announce the decision of Her Majesty's Government, supported by every section of his some- what composite Cabinet. If that decision is war, he will, we be- lieve, receive a response from the country which will leave the Tories no hope even from accepting the task he undertakes, and render a dissolution as unnecessary as it would just now be embarrassing.